


The Sorceress and the Sergeant

by Sunevial



Category: Discord Murder Party (Podcast)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 14:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18802102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunevial/pseuds/Sunevial
Summary: (A Followers AU) One of Old Priestess's hobbies is writing horrendously trashy romance novels based on her coworkers and their potential relationships. This is an excerpt from her latest hit novel, The Sorceress and the Sergeant.





	The Sorceress and the Sergeant

Okay, so, you know my Followers fanfic. Well, one of the characters by the name of Old Priestess likes to write fictionalized accounts of her colleagues in horrible trashy romance situations and then sells them. The Sorceress and the Sergeant is a fictionalized account/probable AU of the relationship between the Witch and the Lieutenant and is absolutely no way canon to my Followers fic.

So, uh, enjoy?

 

The dimly lit hallways were silent for once, the stressed single mothers and frantic college students somehow all asleep at this godforsaken hour. Fumbling with a key ring sporting more baubles than keys, Marjory clicked the lock open and rammed her shoulder into her apartment door as quietly as she possibly could, forcing the sticky thing to move for once in its unhappy existence. She glanced around the inside, checking the darkened corners for movement or unwelcome visitors, before dragging her partner inside and shutting the door firmly behind them both. Only then did she risk turning on her little side table lamp.

“Sorceress, this really isn’t necessary,” Ollie protested, leaning his back up against the doorframe and giving her the most neutral stare she had ever seen him pull off with those ice blue eyes. “You know I am more than capable of regrowing my own skin and muscle tissue.”

Not bothering to roll her eyes, she tossed her earthy green pea coat onto one of her fold out chairs and pointed to a couch that had seen one too many games of Mario Kart in its day. “It’ll heal faster if I help. So, please sit down and take off your shirt. I need to see the wound,” she said, grabbing a step stool and setting it down in her little kitchen. Rolling up her sleeves, she hopped onto the little box and threw open a cabinet, rummaging through the endless stacks of incense and oddly shaped crystals for the bag hidden somewhere in the endless mess.

With an ever so mischievous smirk crossing his face, he kicked off his shoes and plopped down on the worn sofa. He shrugged off his dark gray hoodie, wincing only ever so slightly as it brushed the massive burn along his left shoulder. “Are you sure that’s all you want to see?” he asked with a smile, tossing the ruined sweatshirt off to the side and inspecting the t-shirt now partially fused to his skin.

“Yes, I’m very sure,” she squeaked, her voice going just high enough to hurt even her own eardrums. Her free hand fiddled with a bit of the sweater dress hugging her body. She could feel the blood rising from the bottom of her stocking feet to the top of her rusty red hair, pooling in her cheeks and making the room go from being like inside an icebox to being unbearably warm.

“According to what I know of mortals, your cheeks say otherwise.”

A tiny shriek escaped her lips, one she immediately pushed down into the depths of her throat. Muttering several curses under her breath, she reached for the black ribbon tied around her head in a fashionable bow and pulled it tight against her skull. Ollie wasn’t the first man in her life to poke fun at how easy it was to make her turn the color of a firetruck, not by a long shot;. he just happened to be the one being in this universe who could make her sputter and curl up into a ball of embarrassment nearly on command, and he definitely not use this knowledge responsibly.

Snatching up a small velvet bag, Marjory dumped out a single spool of black ribbon. Resembling the one in her hair in every manner, it seemed to exist only in two dimensions at any one time. Soul ribbon: a material that could save a life as easy as it could take it, the signature weapon and healing instrument of those who served a certain god who oversaw the endless cycle of life and death. It was a tremendous honor to just have a single strand, much less the ability to manipulate nearly endless amounts of it to her will.

After a bit more searching, she fished out a small glass bottle of shimmering red liquid. Holding it above her head, the glittering bits caught rays of light and scattered them onto the white tiles lining the kitchen wall. She smiled a little as she shook it up, still proud of the fact she had been able to craft a true healing potion with the magic she had been given. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she brushed it away and stepped off of her box. No, focus; she had a job to do. Sighing, she walked back into the living room just as Ollie peeled the t-shirt over his head.

The smell hit her first, acrid and reminiscent of eldritch horror and hellfire mixed into some unholy union. It looked just about as nice as it smelled, the flesh a sickly green and charred black wherever it wasn’t oozing a substance that she could not identify but was definitely not blood. Biting back the bile rising in her throat, she unraveled a length of ribbon and snapped it with a pair of scissors. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” she asked, pulling and stretching at the mystical fabric it until it was wide enough to be used as a bandage.

“Because it’s not,” he replied, pushing his long raven hair off of the exposed wound. “As far as acid spitting abominations go, that one was weak at best, considering the most menacing form it could take was a Chinese ursine.”

“It’s called a panda, Ollie,” she said, dabbing a little of the potion onto the piece of ribbon. “One that threw you into an air conditioning unit and gave you a massive third degree chemical burn. That’s not nothing, you know! I’d have to be in the hospital for weeks if I got something like that, not to mention all the skin grafts and blood transfusions and physical therapy for the damage to the muscle structure.”

“I am here precisely because of the fact that grievous injury is much more harmful to you than it is to me,” he said, tapping a chin against his neatly trimmed beard. Before she could blink, two silver wings sprouted out of his back and unfurled against the thin wall separating her from her overly religious neighbors who already didn’t appreciate having a pagan woman next door. “I am your Sergeant, Sorceress. Your guardian. My job is to protect you. That includes getting hurt in your place so you can do your job.”

“It’s Marjory,” she said, taking the medicated bandage and slowly binding up the wound. “And even so, I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“I knew all too well what serving a god of death would entail, Marjory, better than you did when I came to fetch you,” he replied, his voice low and soft but placing a little more emphasis on her name. Shifting a little under the bandage, he gazed at the black ribbon for a long stretch of time. The silence hung in the air between them like a comforting blanket. “I have been protecting mortals like yourself long before you were so much a thought to your parents and will continue to do so long after you move on to wherever it is your soul is destined for. You need not waste your worry on me.”

“But you…you’re important to me,” she said in an equally low voice, winding the wrap under his arm. Her fingers lightly brushed against his exposed skin, soft despite being littered with scars from countless skirmishes against forces she couldn’t name. She tried to keep her gray eyes on patching up her injured partner, but her gaze kept wandering across his chest and down his torso. No longer hidden under relatively shapeless clothing, he was much thinner than she expected, built with the speed and grace of a swan in mind. The heat rose to her cheeks again. “And I worry about the people who are important to me, Ollie.” 

He caught her traitorous gaze and smirked, leaning back as much as he could while she deftly tied up his shoulder. “So I was correct in my assumptions.” Before she could sputter out a defense, he held up his good hand and put it on her shoulder, smiling sympathetically even as his gaze was as cool as his eyes. “You have a good heart. A good, kind, bleeding heart who wants to help the hurt and sick.”

“I wouldn’t be in med school if I didn’t,” she said with a chuckle, her words shaking a little as she tied off the wrap with a small bow.

“But turning that heart on me is dangerous, Marjory,” he continued, keeping his gaze and tone eerily even. “You know that Ollie is just a pet name our other colleagues have given me. You know that if I was ever human, that was long in the past. And you know what I am capable of doing to others…what I am capable of doing to you.” His words trailed off to nearly nothing before he sighed. “It’s best if you keep a heart like that closed around someone like me.”

Marjory held his gaze, memories flashing before her eyes of that first day in the alleyway. She remembered the same steely look in his eyes as he pinned her against the brick wall and pressed a the sharp edge of a knife into her throat, any remorse or guilt for his actions hidden behind years of experience and a touch of obedience to their boss. She remembered beginning to bleed out when ghostly magic erupted from her fingertips, clinging to the wound gouged into her neck and stitching her up as if she had always been able to call upon the endless webs of energy sustaining the world. She remembered his genuine smile as he offered her his hand, saying she had passed the test with flying colors.

She remembered the training sessions, his gentle touch on her arms and legs as he showed her how to more accurately conjure her magics to heal and to help. She remembered the casual teasing and the playful banter between them both as they spent nights traversing rooftops and the realms of the dead. She remembered the nights of teaching him how to sew and understand references to youtube videos and the long conversations over coffee about how strange being human really was as the two of them laughed for hours on end about everything and nothing at all.

“That’s not an option, Ouriel,” she said with a weak smile, laying a hand on his arm as his real name slipped from her lips. “I know who you are and what you can do…and I’m not scared if that ends up hurting me.”

Ever so slowly, he stood up from the couch, reminding her on just how much taller he was than her. He gently took his hand off her shoulder and cupped it over her cheek, resting his palm against her warm skin and turning her head so they looked each other in the eyes. “Is that a challenge?” he asked, the corners of his mouth breaking into a smirk unlike any she had seen before. Chaos danced his irises, flickering no longer with the harsh winds of a blizzard but the gentle winds of an October afternoon. He curled his fingers under her chin, lightly brushing just the tips against her neck.

Her whole body quivered as her cheeks burned with a fire she didn’t know existed in her, one that burned up her body with a bright flickering flame that she knew would not die for anything less than a sleepless night for them both. She didn’t dare look away, instead taking both of her hands and slowly crossing them at the wrist. Letting out a long shaky breath, she pushed herself up onto her tiptoes as the heat spread to her chest and down her stomach. “Go ahead…do your worst.”

A true smile crossed his lips as his other hand reached behind her ear and pulled the ribbon out of her hair, freeing her curls from their prison. As if she weighed nothing at all, he brought her face up to his and sank his lips against hers. It was cold, cold like a comforting autumn breeze, cold like the first snowfall, cold like polished steel, cold but so incredibly warm at the same time. She closed her eyes, letting ice freeze the fire in her body as she fell into his embrace, feeling soft fabric wind its way around her wrists as they sank into darkness together.


End file.
